Cloud abandons Tully again at Ima's funeral

Cloud abandons Tully again at Ima's funeral when Tully, seventeen and newly bereaved, turns to her mother for the care she desperately needs and is left alone once more. The encounter makes the funeral not only a scene of grief for Ima Hart but a painful repetition of Tully’s experience of maternal abandonment: Cloud appears, raises hope, and then vanishes. Against that rupture, the novel places the sustaining presence of Kate Mularkey and the Mularkey family, whose support offers Tully a form of belonging her mother cannot provide.

The funeral and Tully’s isolation

Ima’s funeral has already become more than Tully can bear. She tries to accept the condolences of well-wishers, but by eleven o’clock she is ready to scream at the thought that no one seems to recognize that she is a seventeen-year-old girl dressed in black and alone in the world. Kate and the Mularkeys are away in Canada, and Tully does not know how to reach them. Because they will not be home for two days, she has to endure the service without the people she imagines might have helped her get through it. She leaves the funeral rather than sit through the memories of Ima alone.

Outside, among old cars near the edge of a city park, Tully sees Cloud standing in the shade beneath the maples. Cloud’s appearance—tattered bell-bottoms, a dirty peasant blouse, and a wall of frizzy brown hair—marks her as an unexpected presence at the funeral. Tully’s heart lifts at the sight. In that instant, Cloud’s return seems to promise that she is no longer alone.

Hope meets refusal

Tully runs to Cloud smiling and decides that she can forgive all the years of absence and abandonment because her mother has come when she needs her most. She greets Cloud with gratitude and assumes that Cloud understood how much she needed her. The hope is immediate, but it is built on a precarious assumption: that Cloud’s presence means she is ready to care for her daughter.

Cloud answers not with comfort but with a declaration about Tully’s spirit and freedom. Tully’s stomach drops. She pleads with her mother to stay and explains that she is her flesh and blood and needs her, otherwise she will be alone. Cloud tells her to look at her, then makes the refusal explicit: she cannot help. Tully asks why; she is on the verge of asking whether Cloud loves her, but cannot form the question before the funeral ends and the mourners begin streaming into the parking lot.

Cloud’s answer comes with a cigarette and a blunt acknowledgment of the tragedy of Tully needing her. Whatever sadness Tully sees in her mother’s eyes does not change the practical reality: Cloud will not take responsibility for the daughter who has turned to her. As Tully glances aside to dry her tears, Cloud disappears. The crowd’s arrival coincides with the loss of the fragile possibility Tully had just welcomed.

A repeated wound, and the family Tully seeks

This scene echoes Tully’s earlier experience of reaching for her mother and being denied the security she needs. Her desperate plea at the funeral is not simply a request for company; it exposes how much she has invested in the hope that Cloud might finally choose to stay. Tully tries to make the moment mean that her mother has returned for her, then has to confront the familiar reversal: Cloud is present only briefly, and Tully is left to face the loss alone.

The funeral also clarifies why Kate Mularkey’s friendship carries such weight. When Tully cries in front of Kate, Kate responds by hugging her; when Tully later tells Kate that Ima has died, Kate holds her while she sobs. These scenes provide a pointed contrast to Cloud’s disappearance. Kate does not solve Tully’s grief or replace Ima, but she remains physically present and makes room for it. At Ima’s funeral, Tully can only imagine how the Mularkeys might have helped; the later scenes show the care she receives when Kate is there.

The novel also establishes the limits of Tully’s hope that biological kinship will guarantee support. Her claim that she is Cloud’s flesh and blood meets no promise of care. The bond she can depend on instead develops through chosen family: Kate’s friendship and the Mularkeys’ willingness to include Tully in their home. The funeral encounter therefore marks both a renewed injury and a contrast between the mother who leaves and the friend who stays.

Significance in Tully’s story

Cloud’s disappearance at Ima’s funeral compresses Tully’s grief into a single reversal. She enters the scene already mourning Ima and fearing what will happen to her; seeing Cloud briefly turns that fear into hope, only for Cloud to refuse her and vanish. The episode shows how maternal absence compounds bereavement: Tully is not only losing the person who raised her but also confronting the continuing absence of the mother she still longs for.

The scene’s force comes from that mismatch between need and response. Tully asks for help at a moment when she is plainly vulnerable, but Cloud’s response does not become care, and the funeral crowd cannot substitute for the particular person Tully hoped would stay. The episode belongs to the story’s larger contrast between abandonment and chosen family. It does not resolve Tully’s longing for her mother; instead, it helps explain why Kate’s steadfast presence can become a source of safety, and why the Mularkeys matter to Tully as a family she can turn to when Cloud cannot be relied upon.